• Urgent! Pledge to Vote Democrat in November

Live from Nashville, we are rolling out the online voter pledge for YDA. Go to yda.org/4 and sign the pledge now.

• Mobile Web 2.0: Gen Y Embraces Mobile Social Networks - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership
• T+D Blog: Gen Y: Dumbest Generation?
• ms2 - the backyard of los angeles politics: Alarcon Motion Supports “Pre-Registration of Teenagers”
• Jackson Hole News&Guide | High-schooler to help choose presidential candidate
• america-in-08: Young Democrats National Meeting soon in Nashville
• Sharing is Caring, but it’s Also Hard: Why Your Audience Won’t Comment on Your Blog | NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network
• Cotton Mouth: 5th Circuit overturns Voter ID ruling
• Turn Maine Blue:: Maine Dems roll-out new website, logo
• Rock the Vote Blog: What is your voting story
• CIRCLE - A nonpartisan research center studying youth civic engagement and civic education. » FEATURED: CIRCLE Working Paper 60: The Informed Political Participation of Young Canadians and Americans
• UWire - Student government seeks early voting for Utah students in fall election
• UWire - New U. Utah textbook policy stops profs collecting royalties
• Jessica Valenti on the “Sisterhood Split” | Future Majority
• Opportunities with Campus Progress, The Nation/Brave New Films, DFA/Netroots Nation, and Mobilize.org | Future Majority
• Fighting for Student Voting Rights In Texas | Future Majority
• Ypulse: Don’t Feed ‘The Millennials’
• techPresident – Daily Digest: Qik! Follow that Congressman!
• Should Politicians Use Social Media? - Covering All That’s Social On the Web
• thinking at the interface » Civil Rights in the Digital Era
• notes, thoughts, ideas and responses » The College Blog Network, Come On In!
• Causes Reports On Its First Year - $2.5 Million For 20,000 Charities And NonProfits

I’m about to head to the airport here in Phoenix. While we are in Nashville feel free to come talk to me about the blog, things that you would like to see covered, anger at my blatant use of comma splices, whatever you want.

I won’t be bringing a laptop (so I won’t be tempted) so I will probably not be posting anything until I get back to Phoenix to write a recap post.

See you soon.

• I’m Not a Superdelegate, But I Play One on the Internet | Threat Level from Wired.com
• 105 Free College Lectures : Productivity501
• College Board to Allow Some Colleges to Buy Names of Students in Low-Income Areas - Chronicle.com
• Open Left:: Launching THE UPRISING
• Rock the Vote Blog: Story of the Year Rocks the Vote
• 5 Rules for Summer Interns : Brazen Careerist
• Blogging is not Enough, “Press the Flesh”! | The Marketing Technology Blog

In Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy, Jeffrey Feldman analyzes the use of violent language by right-wing pundits and how it undermines the American tradition of working together to solve our problems. He looks at the debates on gun control and immigration, the use of September 11th, the language of Bill O’Reilly and James Dobson, as well as the perceived “war against Christmas” in order to illustrate how pervasive the violent framing of civic debate has become.

Feldman’s aim is to “take a longer, more detailed look at what right-wing pundits have said with the goal of understanding the kind of public conversation their words have built.” He calls his readers to action to “refuse to accept it, talk about the important issues it obscures, and work together to improve our civic discourse.”

He believes that America’s “lost passion for discussion in politics and the rise of a mass media with entertainment for profit as its central goal” is enabling the violent framing of political debates to continue without check. The public needs “a media with an interest in that conversation that is prioritized above the bottom-line.”

Feldman offers six suggestions to help re-frame the political debate:

1. Stop using “war” metaphors.
2. Revive expository journalism.
3. Invest in local media.
4. Increase citizen participation.
5. Introduce a rating system for political entertainment.
6. Create new deliberative forums.

Feldman looks to the rise of the Millennials as hope for the creation of new deliberative forums.

In many ways, the generation referred to as the “Millennials” (those born post-1980) is already involved with this task, creating and inhabiting these new forums with regularity and enthusiasm.

The rise of the Millennials is also leading to discussions about “harnessing social networking technology for the practice of government itself.”

Here are some of the questions and thoughts I wrote in the margins of my copy while reading:

• It is possible that the polemic writing about the failures of the Bush administration are less effective than expository writing about the failures themselves would be. Polemic writing tends to lead readers to believe that the article is biased political propaganda and turns off all but the choir. Writing modeled after Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle could have a much greater effect in reaching and convincing moderate and even right-leaning citizens.
• What role will expository journalism have on blogging, and conversely, what role will blogging have on expository journalism?
• We should create public awareness programs on the use of new media and citizen journalism.
• What will be the role of traditional media companies and larger websites in facilitating citizen journalism. Currently CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, YouTube, and MTV have created such outlets.
• The use of violent metaphor leads people to believe that solutions are external and are the fault of an enemy. The goal becomes combating the enemy and the only solution is their defeat. It undermines the concept of personal responsibility and the idea that people can work together to create solutions to problems.
• James Dobson’s violence as authority teachings makes the ability to inflict pain a sign of power and authority. This may lead people to use violence against one another in order to show dominance and feel like it is a perfectly acceptable thing to do.
• Those Americans whose culture was the monolithic American culture in the past fear the loss of their cultural hegemony in the wake of the new multiculturalism in America. Instead of realizing that their culture is not being damaged or attacked, only joined by others, they believe that the acceptance of any cultures other than their own is a “war” against their own.

Have you read the book? What are your thoughts? If not go pick yourself up a copy and come back to join the conversation.

• The Top 8 Myths About Millennials | Future Majority
• The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - The First Facebook President?
• Generation Y, Again : The Drama 2.0 Show
  Another article that gets Millennials all wrong.
• Barack Obama : : Change We Can Believe In | Caitlin Harvey’s Blog: Billings Students for Obama
• Vlad Mazek - Vladville Blog » Blog Archive » Disturbing: “The Millennials”
• Best Guess Commentary: America’s Original Sins
• Can Student Activists Curtail Post-Administration Sinecures? | Future Majority
• Generation Y Makes Its Own Career Rules : NPR
• How to Make the Worst Website - Alec Rios
• Quick Hits - May 27th | Future Majority
• DSCC: Kleeb keys in on quality health care, alternative energy
• Summer of Change ‘08 - The California Democratic Party
• The Gavel » Blog Archive » The Facts: The G.I. Bill for the 21st Century
• Supreme Court OKs Cell Phone Unlocking Suit | Threat Level from Wired.com
• N.J. adds 500,000 new Democrats in ‘08 | Politicker NJ
• Stephen Colbert: More Patriotic Than Michelle Malkin | Comedy Central Insider - The Comedy Blog for Comedy Fans
• Blogging For Michigan:: National News Admits It Doesn’t Want To Earn Its Paycheck
• Op-Ed Columnist - The Obama Connection - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com
• Little: Gaining the support of young people is a crucial step to political victory
• the playground: Youth Media Blog-a-thon Annoucement
• Youth, Education & National Service « National Service Express Tour ‘08
• Slashdot | McCain vs. Obama on Tech Issues
• Games for Change festival in NYC June 2-4 with Henry Jenkins, James Gee, and Sandra Day O’Connor - Boing Boing
• Senate Race in Minnesota Shows Power of Bloggers - NYTimes.com
• iMedia Connection: The X Factor: Why banners fail
• frogloop ~ Care2’s Nonprofit Online Communications Community - frogloop Home~Care2’s blog for nonprofits - Landing Page Optimization for Online Fundraising
• The future of political dirty tricks and deception online

Thank you to all my friends, family, and readers that donated yesterday.

I know what you are thinking. What is Kevin doing talking about another online service when we are just starting to figure out what the hell a Twitter is? I feel your pain. Actually, I don’t because I love this stuff, but I do understand your pain.

Well, for those of you that are adventurous, Friendfeed is a social network aggregator that takes your contributions from a whole litany of social networking sites and puts them in one place for discussion.

Friendfeed has recently created a rooms feature that allows you to have a topic-specific room for discussion and sharing, so I have started a Youth Vote room.  So if you have a Friendfeed account or are interested in creating one check it out. My account is here if you want to see it or add me.

Luigi Montanez wrote a great post on TechPresident about the perfect campaign email. He used the recent Hillary Clinton campaign’s Kentucky/Oregon appeal to show exactly what an email should look like.

So some simple rules to live by:

• Choose a clear message and a clear action. If you can’t keep it simple, don’t send the email.
• Limit messages to 5 to 7 paragraphs.
• A clickable rectangular graphic aligned to the right of the opening paragraphs will always get the most clicks.
• Do not embed links in a larger paragraph. Allow them to stand alone with whitespace above and below.
• Use formatting like bold, underline, and italics sparingly, and only to drive the main point.

That’s only a taste of the post. I encourage you to go read the whole article.